Content Strategy helps students make content relevant to consumers

June 24, 2015 | By Courtney Wessel (IMC16)

Medill IMC Professor Candy Lee’s graduate Content Strategy class presented final projects on June 3 after creating a content strategy and marketing plan for local clients.

Students this quarter worked with Evanston companies Freshii, Gigi’s Boutique, Bloom3, The Spice and Tea Exchange, Forever Yoghurt, Coffee Lab, and Oceanique. The purpose of the course is to understand how to create content that is audience centric and allied to an organization's goals.

The projects included a financial component, content strategy recommendations, website design ideas and were accompanied with a video. Students showcased some content and included a two to three minute video for the local business that successfully integrated the content marketing and multimedia concepts developed this quarter.

Abby Rudd (IMC15) worked with Oceanique and was shocked by the importance of understanding the back-end, coding aspect of website and content development.

“Just having a simple understanding of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript can completely alter your strength at communicating with the web developers and marketing teams,” Rudd said.

Rudd said her biggest take away was learning that the story is the most important element of each piece of content.

“Whether it be a banner ad, video or article, every piece of content needs to guide the consumers through a story or framework to process what it means,” she said. “The story is what makes a piece of content relevant to consumers.”

Christiana Stewart (IMC15) wants to work in brand management for a luxury retail goods or beauty products company. “This course taught me how to tell the story of the brand in a way that can engage your audience and increase your customer base,” she said. “It seamlessly tied the creative side of thing to the analytical side of things.”

Students learned how to write to speak to an audience, and how to synthesize content—all skills that make you a better marketer.

“We need to ensure that our graduates are able to consider how to integrate all that they have learned in the master’s program and relate it to how content is vital to an organization. Content needs to ally to an organization’s strategy, needs to be audience-centric, meet measurable goals, ensure storytelling techniques, add value and engage,” Lee said.